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While Samsung was announcing its Galaxy Gear smartwatch yesterday, Qualcomm was busy announcing its own smartwatch, called the Toq. Pronounced as “talk”, the Qualcomm Toq pairs with your existing Android smartphone and brings all your notifications where you can see them at a glance.

The main feature of the Qualcomm Toq is the unique Mirasol display. Developed by Qualcomm, Mirasol is a type of interferometric modulator display that works without the need of a backlight. Just like e-paper displays, Mirasol displays can stay on constantly without requiring power and are perfectly visible even under bright sunlight. But Mirasol goes one step ahead of current e-paper displays and is capable of displaying full color and it also uses the ambient light as a backlight, thus significantly reducing the power consumption. Read more »

Nokia these days has become notorious for mocking its competitors, especially Samsung, at every opportunity they can find. The most recent example was when they parked a truck with a Lumia 1020 ad mocking the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom right behind it in the UK.

The latest stab comes in the form of a Twitter image uploaded by Nokia’s German account. The image depicts a Samsung Galaxy S4 broken in half over a red background with a caption ‘Have a break, have a…’. If it’s not clear already, the image is supposed to mock the new Android 4.4 Kit Kat that was announced by Google a couple of days ago. Read more »

Yesterday, Samsung took the wraps off the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone at IFA in Berlin. The company’s latest flagship comes packed with features, as is usual for a Samsung smartphone, and there is a whole bunch of new stuff to go alone with the stuff we have already seen in the past.

To show off all the new features of the Galaxy Note 3, Samsung has now released a fairly lengthy six and half minute long video that goes through each of them. Let’s talk about them briefly before we get to the video. Read more »

Microsoft has just revealed the launch date for their next generation Xbox One console. The Xbox One will go on sale in 13 markets around the world on November 22, 2013. This is full week after the PlayStation 4 launch, which is on November 15 in the US.

The 13 markets that will be getting the console on Day 1 include Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and USA. Other markets will be getting the console sometime in 2014. Read more »

ASUS has announced a slew of new notebooks at IFA 2013. We already saw the Zenbook UX301 and now there are two more. One of them is the Transformer Book T300, which is an updated version of the Transformer Pad TX300 launched earlier this year. The major update here is a switch to a more modern fourth generation Intel Haswell processor. The RAM and storage have also been doubled and now stands at 8GB and 256GB respectively.

Other than that it is mostly the same 13-inch tablet/notebook hybrid as before. You can simply un-dock the display from the keyboard and use it as a 13-inch Windows 8 tablet or dock it in and it turns into a full-fledged notebook. Read more »

Amazon has announced the second generation model of last year’s Kindle Paperwhite. The update focuses on improving existing features instead of introducing something dramatically new.

First of all, the display has been improved. The e-paper display now features higher contrast and improved reflectivity so text looks clearer. Amazon is also using second generation of the backlighting that they introduced with the last year’s model, which is now improved, somehow. Read more »

In a rather surprising turn of events, Google decided to partner with Nestlé to come up with the name for the next version of their mobile operating system, Android 4.4 Kit Kat.

But while Google is talking about Kit Kat the operating system, Nestlé is taking the opportunity to promote Kit Kat the chocolate in a very different way, projecting it as some sort of new gadget on their new website. And they have a video to go with it as well. Read more »

BlackBerry had promised us a version of its popular BlackBerry Messenger or BBM service for Android and iOS devices quite a while ago now. While we are yet to see the final version release on either platform, someone managed to get their hands on a beta and has a uploaded a video for our viewing pleasure.

As you can see from the image above, BBM for Android looks nothing like any other Android app. Instead of adopting the look of the platform, BlackBerry has decided to instead port over the look of BB10, which is why the BBM for Android looks exactly the way it does on BB10, complete with the tabs on the bottom and screens on the side. Read more »

Acer is on a roll with new announcements at the IFA (which is actually yet to start). Among the long range of products they announced today is the Acer T272HUL monitor.

First of all, the T272HUL has a 27-inch WQHD VA panel, which means it has a resolution of 2,560×1,440, which is four times the resolution of a 720p panel. Secondly, it is a touchscreen panel with 10 point mult-touch support, so it will work great with Windows 8. Read more »

Acer announced the Aspire R7 notebook a few months back with the unique Ezel hinge that allowed it to be folded in various ways and be used as a notebook or a tablet. Acer is now updating the Aspire R7 at IFA with some new hardware features to keep it up to date.

First of all, the Aspire R7 gets the latest generation Intel Core series processor, commonly known as the Haswell series. It also features up to 12GB of RAM and 1TB hard drive (or 256GB SSD) for storage, along with a backlit keyboard and Windows 8.1. Read more »

We have been hearing about and seen some images of Sony’s outlandish camera accessory for smartphones that is basically a giant camera that snaps onto the back of your existing smartphone. Now we have some more images, along with the prices these devices will be selling for.

As we had learned before, there will be two of these, with varying specifications. Named the SmartShot QX10 and the SmartShot QX100, the former will have an 18 megapixel sensor with f/3.3-5.9 optics whereas the latter will have a 20.2 megapixel camera with f/1.8-4.9 optics. Read more »

Once upon a time Digg used to be this really popular news aggregator site. But then reddit happened and Digg was pushed to the sidelines. Last year, the site was acquired by a company called Betaworks, who has since been in the process of revamping it, first by launching a brand new website that does not suck and an iOS app to go with it.

Continuing down that path, they have now launched a new Digg app for Android and thankfully, it’s not just a port of the iOS app. The new Digg app, now available for free on the Play Store, follows the same minimalistic design of the website and the iOS app, with clean white and black design. Read more »

We all know Samsung is working on a smartwatch that would be announced at the IFA event in Berlin next month along with the Galaxy Note III. Samsung themselves have confirmed both devices. But we are yet to get a glimpse of what either devices will look like.

While we haven’t made much progress on that front, we do have what looks like legit screenshots of the Galaxy Gear application that would control the smartwatch. The app is supposedly responsible for letting you pair your smartphone with the watch using NFC, personalize it using different clock faces and even send compatible applications over. Read more »

The new Nexus 7 is easily one of the best Android tablets available on the market today and most would say that it is, in fact, the best Android tablet available on the market today. However, so far it has been available officially only in the US and Canada, but that changes today.

Starting today, those who live in UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Japan will also be available to head over to their Play Store and purchase the new Nexus 7 directly from Google. Read more »